By: Phil Leigh

Monthly Archives: September 2014

About six months ago The Daily Show with Jon Stewart hosted a mock TV game show called The Weakest Lincoln.Stewart asked questions about the Civil War targeting “contestant” Judge Andrew Napolitano whose answers were judged by a panel of “experts” all of whom are Righteous Cause Mythologists. Several of the panel member statements were undeniably false and nearly all the others were misleading. The members were (1) Dr. James Oakes of City University of New York, (2) Dr. Manisha Sinha of UMASS-Amherst, and (3) Dr. Eric Foner of Columbia.

Dr. Oakes made at least three false statements. First, he said “nobody was talking about tariffs” as a War issue. But the Confederate Constitution outlawed protectivetariffs thereby insuring that Confederate tariffs would be much lower than those in the USA. Also, many Northern newspaper editorials lamented the impact on the federal tax revenue and the economy if protective tariffs no longer applied in the southern states. Continue reading →